JoAnna

About JoAnna M. Lund

JoAnna Lund, a graduate of the University of Western Illinois, worked as a commercial insurance underwriter for eighteen years before starting her own business, Healthy Exchanges, Inc., which publishes cookbooks, a monthly newsletter, motivational booklets, and inspirational audiotapes. Her first book, Healthy Exchanges Cookbook, has more than 250,000 copies in print. Her second book, HELP: Healthy Exchanges Lifetime Plan, was published in 1996. A popular speaker with hospitals, support groups for heart patients and diabetics, and service and volunteer organizations, she has appeared on QVC, on hundreds of regional television and radio shows, and has been featured in newspapers and magazines across the country.

     The recipient of numerous business awards, JoAnna was an Iowa delegate to the national White House Conference on Small Business. She is a member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, the Society for Nutrition Education, and other professional publishing and marketing associations. She lives with her husband, Clifford, in DeWitt, Iowa.

JoAnna M. Lund  and the Creation of Healthy Exchanges

For twenty-eight years I was the diet queen of DeWitt, Iowa. I tried every diet I ever heard of, every one I could afford, and every one that found it's way to my small town in eastern Iowa. I was willing to try anything that promised to "melt off the points" determined to deprive my body in every possible way in order to become thin at last.

     I sent away for expensive "miracle" diet pills. I starved myself on the Cambridge Diet and the Bahama Diet. I gobbled Ayds diet candies, took thyroid pills, fiber pills, prescription and over-the-counter diet pills. I went to endless weight-loss support group meetings--but I managed to turn healthy programs such as Overeaters Anonymous, Weight Watchers, and TOPS into unhealthy diets...diets I could never follow for more than a few months.

     I was determined to discover something that worked long-term, but each new failure increased my depression that I 'd never find it.

     I ate strange concoctions and rubbed on even stranger potions. I tried liquid diets like Slimfast and Metrecal. I agreed to be hypnotized. I tried reflexology and even had an acupuncture device stuck in my ear!

     Does my story sound a lot like yours? I'm not surprised. No wonder the weight-loss business is a billion-dollar industry!

     Every new thing I tried seemed to work--at least at first. And losing that first five to ten pounds would get me so excited. I'd believe that this new miracle diet would, finally, get my weight off for keeps.

     Inevitably, though, the initial excitement wore off. The diet's routine and boredom set in, and I quit. I shoved the pills to the back of the medicine chest; pushed the cans of powdered shake mix to the rear of the kitchen cabinets, slid all the program materials out of sight under my bed; and once more I felt like a failure.

     Like most dieters, I quickly gained back the weight I'd lost each time, along with a few extra "souvenir" pounds that seemed always to settle around my hips. I'd done the diet-lose-weight-gain-it-all-back "yo-yo" on the average of once a year. It's no exaggeration to say that over the years I've lost 1,000 pounds--and gained back 1,150 pounds.

     Finally, at the age of forty-six I weighted more than I'd ever imagined possible. I'd stopped believing that any diet could work for me. I drowned my sorrows in sacks of cake donuts, and wondered if I'd live long enough to watch my grandchildren grow up.

     Something had to change.
     I had to change.
     Finally, I did.

     I'm just over fifty now--and I'm 130 pounds less than my all-time high of close to 300 pounds. I've kept the weight off for more than six years. I'd like to lose another ten pounds, but I'm not obsessed about it. If it takes me the rest of my life to accomplish it, that's okay.

     What I do care about is never saying hello again to any of those unwanted pounds I said good-bye to!

     How did I jump off the roller coaster I was on? For one thing, I finally stopped looking to food to solve my emotional problems. But what really shook me up--and got me started on the path that changed my life--was Operation Desert Storm in early 1991. I sent three children off to the Persian Gulf War--my son-in-law, Matt, a medic in Special Forces; my daughter, Becky, a full-time college student and member of a medical unit in the Army Reserve; and my son James, a member of the Inactive Army Reserve reactivated as a chemicals expert.

     Somehow, knowing that my children were putting their lives on the ine got me thinking about my own mortality--and I knew in my heart the last thing they needed while they were oversears was to get a letter from home saying that their mother was ill because of a food-related problem.

     The day I drove the third child to the airport to leave for Saudi Arabia, something happened to me that would change my life for the better--and forever. I stopped praying my constant prayer as a professional dieter, which was simply "Please, God, let me lose ten pounds by Friday." Instead I began praying, "God, please help me not to be a burden to my kids and my family."

     I quit praying for what I wanted, and started praying for what I needed--and in the process my prayers were answered. I couldn't keep the kids safe--that was out of my hands--but I could try to get healthier to better handle the stress of it. It was the least I could do on the homefront.

     That quiet prayer was the beginning of the new JoAnna Lund. My initial goal was not to lose weight or create healthy recipes. I only wanted to become healthier for my kids, my husband, and myself.

     Each of my children returned safely from the Persian Gulf War. But something didn't come back--the 130 extra pounds I'd been lugging around for far too long. I'd finally accepted the truth after all those agonizing years of suffering through on-again, off-again dieting.

     There are no "magic" cures in life.

     No "magic" potion, pill, or diet will make unwanted pounds disappear.

     I found something better than magic, if you can believe it. When I turned my weight and health dilemma over to God for guidance, a new JoAnna Lund and Healthy Exchanges were born.

     I discovered a new way to live my life--and uncovered an unexpected talent for creaming easy "common folk" healthy recipes, and sharing my commonsense approach to healthy living. I learned that I could motivate others to change their lives and adopt a positive outlook. I began publishing cookbooks and a monthly food newsletter, and speaking to groups all over the country.

     I like to say, "When life handed me a lemon, not only did I make healthy, tasty lemonade, I wrote the recipe down!"

     What I finally found was not a quick fix or a short-term diet, but a great way to live well for a lifetime.

     I want to share it with you.

-----JoAnna M. Lund-Cooking Healthy with a Man in Mind.

JoAnna Margaret Lund Obituary

September 4, 1944 ~ May 20, 2006 (age 61)

JoAnna M. McAndrews Lund, 61, DeWitt, Iowa, died Saturday evening, May 20, 2006 in her home following a courageous four-year battle with inflammatory breast cancer.

A funeral service will be held in Schultz Funeral Home Chapel, DeWitt, at 10:30 a.m. Thursday, May 25, 2006. The Rev. Curt Girod officiating. Interment will follow at Elmwood Cemetery, DeWitt. Pallbearers will be Jerry Coates, Brian Hass, Gerry Schultz, Mike McCollum, George Garrett, and Jerry Stamp. Honorary pallbearer is John Strotmann. Visitation will be from 2 until 7 p.m. Wednesday, May 24, 2006 at the Funeral Home.

Memorials may be made to Camp Courageous () or The Discovery Shop in Bettendorf, Iowa.

Condolences may be expressed and a photo tribute viewed at

JoAnna Margaret McAndrews Lund was born September 4, 1944 at Mercy Hospital, Davenport, Iowa to Jerome and Agnes Carrington McAndrews. JoAnna graduated from Lost Nation High School in 1962. She married Daniel Dierickx in Lost Nation in 1966. JoAnna married Clifford Lund in DeWitt in 1979.

She was employed at Iowa Mutual Insurance Company for almost 20 years before starting her own business, Healthy Exchanges in 1991. While at Iowa Mutual Insurance Company, she obtained her CPCU (Charted Property Casualty Underwriter) and was the first woman in the history of the company to obtain this prestigious degree. JoAnna graduated from the University of Western Illinois in 1990 and received their Distinguished Graduate Award in 1997. She was selected to be a delegate to President Clinton’s Small Business Conference in Washington, DC in 1996. In the course of operating Healthy Exchanges, she received many, many business and professional awards. In 2004, she was awarded the Gem Award (an award given to a lay person who best gets the message of healthy eating and living across to the general public) by the Iowa Dietetic Association. She hosted two national PBS TV series, and Cliff and JoAnna hosted a call-in radio program on WOC-AM in Davenport for over 6 years. She was a frequent guest on QVC (the cable shopping network from Philadelphia, PA) for over 10 years and sold more books on QVC than anyone in the history of the company. JoAnna also did the cooking segments on RV Today on various cable TV stations. JoAnna was featured in such magazines as Forbes, People, Bon Appetit, National Enquirer and Prevention. Since 1992, she authored more than 40 cookbooks for Penguin Putnam, sold more than 2,000,000 copies of her various books and wrote and published the monthly subscription based Healthy Exchanges Food Newsletter. She was a featured columnist for King Features in weekly newspapers, wrote for Voice of the Diabetic Newspaper, formed her own syndicate for her monthly food column in senior papers all over the USA and wrote an on-line cooking column of Trailer Life.

Besides her love of sharing her “common folk” healthy recipes, she enjoyed gardening, cookbook collecting, sewing, and spending time with her family and traveling all over America with Cliff.

JoAnna is survived by her husband, Clifford; daughter, Rebecca (John) Taylor, San Antonio, Texas; sons, James (Pam) Dierickx, Lowden, Iowa, and Thomas (Angie) Dierickx, Abingdon, Illinois; eight grandchildren, Spencer and Ellie Taylor; Zach, Josh, Aaron, and Abram Dierickx; Cheyanne and Cami Jo Dierickx; sisters, Mary McAndrews and Regina Reyes, Davenport; mother-in-law, Marge Lund, Calamus, Iowa; sisters-in-law, Loretta Rothbart, DeWitt, and Juanita Dithmart, Clinton, Iowa; brother-in-law, Dale Lund, Calamus; many nieces and nephews.